What do you say when you tried atheism — genuinely tried it — and it just didn't hold? When the mystery of your own consciousness, the fact that humans...
Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit, sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua. Ut enim ad minim veniam, quis nostrud exercitation ullamco.
Tami Simon’s in-depth audio podcast interviews with leading spiritual teachers and luminaries. Listen in as they explore their latest challenges and breakthroughs - the leading edge of their work.
Join the New York Times bestselling author of The Untethered Soul, The Surrender Experiment, and Living Untethered for this free series of curated teaching sessions, recorded at his Temple of the Universe yoga and meditation center.
Reality is simply the unfolding of countless causes across time, and our problems arise when we resist what is, rather than accept it. Our minds become disturbed due to personalization, judgment, and the suppression of experiences we can’t handle, which results in inner energy blockages (samskaras).
Spiritual liberation means learning to handle reality exactly as it is, letting go of suppression and control, and allowing the natural energy of life to flow through us without obstruction. This leaves us in a state of clarity from which we can make decisions that are in harmony with life, rather than fighting with it.
What does it take to truly bet on yourself—to trust your own resilience, wisdom, and worthiness even when life falls apart?
Tami Simon speaks with Andrea Owen, a global keynote speaker, professional certified life coach, and author whose books have sold more than 300,000 copies, including the popular How to Stop Feeling Like Sh*t. Andrea’s new audio immersion workshop with Sounds True—Live Like You Give a Damn: 25 Bold Moves to Get Honest, Face the Hard Stuff, and Show Up for Yourself—offers fierce compassion and practical wisdom for anyone ready to stop abandoning themselves and start living with authenticity and confidence.
In this conversation, Tami and Andrea explore:
What roller derby taught Andrea about falling down and getting back up—and why you have to actually take action to build confidence
The concept of “big prize energy” and what it means to turn up the volume on your authentic self
How to recognize patterns of self-abandonment and reclaim your inner authority
Why action creates confidence, not the other way around—and what it means to “rush the net”
Learning to trust your body’s wisdom and your own resilience, especially during heartbreak
The importance of parenting yourself and accepting that life will hand you “sh*t sandwiches”
How detachment in relationships differs from disconnection, and why it’s essential for wholeness
Andrea brings refreshing honesty, humor, and decades of coaching experience to questions about confidence, relationships, and personal transformation. If you’re ready to stop waiting for permission and start trusting yourself, this conversation offers both inspiration and practical tools for showing up fully in your own life.
Listen now and discover what becomes possible when you live like you give a damn.
Go deeper with Andrea’s new audio immersion workshop from Sounds True, Live Like You Give a Damn: 25 Bold Moves to Get Honest, Face the Hard Stuff, and Show Up for Yourself. With wisdom, humor, and honesty, Andrea offers stories, concrete steps and practical exercises to remind you that it’s every person’s birthright to live a fulfilling life. Learn more at https://www.soundstrue.com/products/live-like-you-give-a-damn
Note: This interview originally aired on Sounds True One, where these special episodes of Insights at the Edge are available to watch live on video and with exclusive access to Q&As with our guests. Learn more at https://www.join.soundstrue.com
Stress and suffering arise not from external events but from our internal resistance to them—based on our inner preferences, fears, and desires toward what is happening. The outer world manifests from vast cosmic forces beyond our control, while our inner reactions are shaped by past impressions we have held onto. The path to liberation lies in relaxing and letting go of resistance, allowing life to flow through us without obstruction, thus opening to inner peace, joy, and spiritual freedom.
A good poem, says David Whyte, is revelatory; it takes hold of us and surprises us with new understanding. David Whyte is the bestselling author of ten books of poetry, three works of prose, and the celebrated Sounds True audio program What to Remember When Waking.
In this podcast, Tami Simon speaks with David about his writing career, his creative approach to leadership, and the conversation with life to which we are all constantly invited. Tami and David discuss the willingness to have courageous conversations; the generativity of “a well-felt sadness”; reframing regret; the seven steps of invitational leadership; “robust vulnerability” and choosing the path we really care about; anguish, anxiety, and being OK with the unknown; letting go; “apprenticing ourselves to our own disappearance”; and more.
Note: This episode originally aired on Sounds True One, where these special episodes of Insights at the Edge are available to watch live on video and with exclusive access to Q&As with our guests. Learn more at join.soundstrue.com.
Lance Allred is a former NBA player (who was the first legally deaf player in the league), public speaker, and author. With Sounds True, he has published The New Alpha Male: How to Win the Game When the Rules Are Changing. In this episode of Insights at the Edge, Tami Simon speaks with Lance about the experiences he had in professional sports that led him to reevaluate what it means to be a man in contemporary society. Lance explains how his upbringing in a rural, polygamous commune informed his original ideas about masculinity, highlighting the subconscious assumptions about money and power that affect American men’s self-worth. Tami and Lance also discuss the roles of emotional vulnerability and surrender in the lives of modern men. Finally, they talk about the principle of perseverance and the increasingly urgent need for all cultures to reexamine their assumptions and core values.(63 minutes)
Thomas Hübl is an Austrian-born contemporary spiritual teacher and the founder of the Academy of Inner Science.With Sounds True, he has recorded the audio training The Power of We: Awakening in the Relational Field and written a book titled Healing Collective Trauma: A Process for Integrating Our Intergenerational and Cultural Wounds. In this episode of Insights at the Edge, Tami Simon speaks with Thomas about healing collective trauma as the work of our time. They discuss how we can feel and are affected by major traumas of the past, even if we didn’t directly experience them, and the ways in which this contributes to our collective separation. Thomas also explains the concept of “retrocausality,” or the potential for the healing we undertake in our lifetimes to benefit our entire family lines. At a time when so much ancestral trauma, multigenerational trauma, and cultural trauma is in our midst, Thomas invites us to turn toward it and join together to heal and integrate the pain of the past as we create a different future.
The mind can act as either a prison or a liberator, depending on how we use it. By holding on to uncomfortable past experiences, we trap ourselves in suffering. Expanding our thoughts beyond ourselves allows us to break free of the prison of mind. Through this process, we canliberate our consciousness, experience peace, and ultimately achieve enlightenment.
Everyone is naturally filled with love and ecstasy, but this is obscured by the baggage we carry inside. You are blocked from realizing your divine state by the stored emotions and mental constructs from your past. The spiritual path is not about acquiring something new; it’s about letting go of the barriers that prevent you from experiencing the greatness that has always been within you.
True spiritual maturity is not about seeking momentary highs but about dealing with the lows that inhibit one’s spiritual ascent. The real obstacles to spiritual fulfillment come in the form of emotional blockages and self-imposed personal limitations. By focusing on letting go of these internal tethers, we can naturally rise to higher states of consciousness without forcing the process.
Human consciousness is often distracted by lower vibrations like fear and insecurity, which prevent us from experiencing higher energies such as love and joy. Spiritual growth is a constant process of learning to handle reality’s vibrations without being pulled down. By mastering how we react to reality, we can experience higher states of being and, ultimately, serve others through love and compassion.
The meaning of life is to experience divine ecstasy. How? By allowing consciousness to flow through all experiences without resistance. The problem is that we often get lost in our preferences, attachments, and aversions, which creates a false sense of self and leads to suffering. True spiritual growth involves letting go of past psychological blockages by facing life’s challenges without inner resistance. This means learning to use every moment as an opportunity for purification and self-realization—in essence, to use life as your guru.
Life feels complicated only because we become entangled in our thoughts, emotions, and external experiences. Spiritual growth involves recognizing that our conscious awareness, which is transcendent to these phenomena, is the essence of our being. As such, we do not have to become overly identified with these fleeting experiences. By learning to handle all of life’s experiences without reactive resistance, we can maintain inner peace and return to the source of our being.
Inner suffering is not caused by what happens, but by our preferences about what should or shouldn’t have happened—the gap between reality and what we want it to be. Our entire preference system is built from the sum of our learned experiences, which compared to all else going on, is statistically insignificant. But we worship what we have experienced as “truth,” to be defended and fought for. When we stop fighting, we come to understand that everyone is driven by their own conditioned experiences and inner pain—so we stop judging and start asking, “How can I help?” We act from a place of clarity and compassion, not to get our way, but to raise the energy of whatever passes in front of us.
Ego is the false self, created from past experiences, that constantly judges, fears, and tries to control life to feel okay. Suffering comes from identifying with these inner patterns instead of recognizing oneself as the awareness observing them. Spiritual liberation is achieved by noticing, not resisting, and letting all inner disturbances pass through, revealing one’s true nature as peaceful, conscious presence.
Spiritual growth is not about escaping life or reaching for God outside oneself, but about letting go of the ego self that constantly tries to resist and manipulate reality. Human suffering comes from the inability to handle inner discomfort, which leads people to try to control the outside world, suppress emotions, and fight to defend their self-concept. As one practices acceptance, surrender, and non-resistance, consciousness naturally rises beyond the personal self into peace, clarity, and union with higher awareness.
The essence of a spiritual life is to do the absolute best you can in each moment and renounce attachment to the results. This is the core teaching of the Bhagavad Gita. When actions are motivated by the desire to gain something or avoid loss, the ego creates anxiety, disappointment, and endless striving. True fulfillment comes from giving your whole being to the moment as an act of service to the Universe, allowing growth, freedom, and inner expansion to arise naturally.
People rely on external goals for their inspiration and happiness. But the sense of happiness is actually experienced inside and, with right understanding, can be an unconditional state of being. Conditions for our happiness exist because we have stored past disturbances that must be avoided if we want to feel okay inside. True liberation comes from letting go of these inner blockages, staying open to life, and choosing happiness regardless of what happens.
The world around us unfolds in accordance with the vast universal forces of cause and effect, which have been going on throughout time. In contrast, our inner world is created by the tiny sum of our individual experiences. Human beings create suffering by filling the space between themselves and reality with their likes and dislikes. By practicing acceptance, surrender, and non-resistance, one can live freely, engage fully with life, and act from a place of openness rather than personal preference. True peace arises when one stops resisting reality and instead honors and participates in it fully.
Resistance is the inner act of opposing what is, and it is the root cause of all suffering. Whether you are resisting emotions, thoughts, or life events, it is this opposition—not the events themselves—that causes disturbance. Spiritual freedom comes through a deep state of nonresistance: allowing reality to pass through you without blocking it. Once you reach this state, you are truly ready to interact with life instead of reacting to it.
The ego often says “I don’t care” as a defense mechanism to avoid pain or disappointment. Truly not caring isn’t about becoming indifferent, but about genuinely letting go of the need for things to be a certain way. When we stop resisting life and release our inner preferences, we experience a peaceful state where nothing has to change for us to be OK.
The meaning of life is to experience divine ecstasy. How? By allowing consciousness to flow through all experiences without resistance. The problem is that we often get lost in our preferences, attachments, and aversions, which creates a false sense of self and leads to suffering. True spiritual growth involves letting go of past psychological blockages by facing life’s challenges without inner resistance. This means learning to use every moment as an opportunity for purification and self-realization—in essence, to use life as your guru.
“Do you mind?” We “mind” everything, from traffic to childhood memories, and this habitual minding creates endless mental ripples that disturb our peace. Spiritual growth is not found through adding practices but through subtracting resistance, through relaxing and letting go of what disturbs us. Every moment becomes an opportunity to free ourselves by choosing not to mind, and over time this unlocks profound freedom and transformation.
The foundational flaw in human behavior is the belief that “I’m not okay.” What follows is the lifelong attempt to fix this through external achievements, relationships, and coping mechanisms. Spiritual growth begins by shifting from trying to fix one’s discomfort to inquiring why the discomfort exists in the first place. Life itself becomes the guru, revealing daily why we close our hearts. The only true practice is to let go of resistance in every moment, allowing life to sculpt us into our highest nature, which is already pure joy and love.
The central spiritual teaching is that we are not the mind but the awareness behind it. The personal mind, composed of impressions from past experiences, creates a false sense of self (ego) that causes suffering and distraction. Spiritual growth begins by recognizing this addiction to the personal mind and learning to lean away from its pull rather than engaging with or resisting its thoughts. This process allows divine energy (Shakti) to emerge and guide us deeper into the source of consciousness.
